A wide spread custom is the decorating of doors, particularly during various holiday seasons. The doors which are decorated are entrance doors into homes and apartments, and doors for rooms within homes and in offices. These decorations are applied in order enhance the celebration of the holiday, decorations being frequently applied at Halloween, Thanksgiving and during the Christmas-New Year season.
These door decorations were traditionally such objects as corn husks and wreaths which were attached to the exterior of entrance doors to homes, and paper covering of various kinds for a face of a door. Such paper coverings include, for example, sheets of paper attached to a face of the door by adhesive tape, the paper being printed with scenes appropriate to the season, or printed with fancy designs as used for wrapping. Individual decorators sometimes paste silhouette figures or paint or color representation of appropriate persons or articles to the paper covering.
Where wreathes or corn husks were attached to the door, this was frequently done by a nail which penetrated into the door, marring its appearance when the decorative object and the nail were withdrawn, and in the case of an exterior door, breaking the water impervious coating on the face of the door.
The door coverings which were applied so as to cover an entire face of the door, and secured by adhesive tape, were time consuming; persons, including the staff of businesses, often expend a substantial amount of time in applying the paper covering, and in the other ornamentation which their imagination and skills dictated. In addition, a substantial amount of time was consumed in removing and discarding the decorative paper covering, leaving the entire process to be repeated at the next season, with attendant expense and consumption of time.